Born out of Love: Ninth Doctor and Rose
by songbirdgirl
Summary: The Ninth Doctor's thoughts before regeneration.


The Doctor was not sure when he had fallen in love with Rose. He hadn't held this regeneration very long, but it had been one born out of war. He couldn't even remember the end of the Last Great Time War, but the results of his actions haunted him. When the old man died, he had taken his place. And the burden was heavy. He didn't want to live. He wanted to fix everything in time that had ever gone wrong, with no regard for the consequences. But it seemed that the universe had different plans.

The Doctor had been in the TARDIS. He had plans to find war. To fight any losing cause he could find. He had no plans of allowing himself to regenerate if he died. But the TARDIS picked up on a temporal problem in London in 2005 and crashed. He investigated, and that was when he met Rose. He had met millions of beings in his time. But Rose was something different. She was all yellow and pink and cute with her answer about students. And when she thought everything was a joke, and she smiled at him with that adorable tongue-between-her-teeth smile. And then they were running, and he grabbed her hand, and he felt... something. He felt something, something other than hate and desperation, for the first time in a long time.

And then the day was saved, and there was that pathetic human boy, clinging to Rose's waist, and even as he asked her to go with him, he knew she would say no, and that that boy would be the reason why. And say no she did. So he left. He traveled all around space and time, trying to forget the Time War, like before. But now, he was also trying to forget Rose Tyler's face. He went back through her time stream here and there. Saw a happy little pink and yellow girl. Saw a moody teenager. Saw a little girl, yellow and black and tears. A funeral. Saw the night she came home and told her mum she was leaving school and leaving her. Saw the night she came back. Her and Mickey playing in the park. Her and Mickey kissing outside of her work. He couldn't do it. So he went back to the exact moment when he left her. And he said, "Did I mention it also goes anywhere in time?"

And she changed her mind. He could tell she was a selfless girl, but for once, she made the decision to do something for herself. That was the momet he realized he couldn't go on without her. Every day she woke up and came into the console room and he worried she would have her bags with her. Everytime she wanted to go home, he would worry that this time she would choose to stay. That this would be the time Jackie or Mickey would wear her down, and she would return her key. And he wasn't sure what he would do if she left him. He wasn't sure he could go back to being alone when she took his pain away. Made him so much better than before.

There was the time they ended up in the London Blitz. He didn't think he would ever forget the feelings of hate, or fear, or insecurities that welled up in him when he found Rose in the arms of Captain Jack Harkness. And while they quickly became friends, he knew he would always look at him with a sense of rivalry, no matter how lightly Jack took flirting with Rose. So when they ended up trapped in that room without Jack, the Doctor made it a point to dance. His hands on her waist. Her face so close to his. He could smell her. Warm and sunny. How does a person manage to smell like happiness? He didn't even notice when Jack beamed them in. Then later, when Rose said Jack might like that dance. He was so unwilling to share. So he didn't.

Which brought him to now. Jack had kissed them both goodbye. He had to keep them safe as long as he could, and he went to his death knowing it was the end. The Doctor felt it when he left this world. A sudden lack. And now he had to lose Rose. She changed his life. She rewoke love in him, out of her kindness and devotion to him. And they were all here to die. And all he could do was send her away. There was a time when his worst fear was having to live without her. Now, his worst fear had become breaking the promise he had made to Jackie, that he would always bring her home safely. Because she deserved to live. She deserved to go on, filling peoples' lives with kindness and love, healing people she encountered. And he deserved to die for the sins he had committed. So he did the only thing he could do. He tricked her. Sent her home. Now he knew he could die without that final weight on his conscious.

But she returned. How she did it, he was unsure. He started to feel panic well up inside him. But something was different about her. Hey eyes were glowing a golden color, swirling, light spilling out of her. She told him she had looked into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looked into her. She stopped Daleks with one wave of her hand. The panic was growing faster. He was looking at her, but she was so bright his eyes hurt. Dazzling.

"I am the Bad Wolf," she said. "I create myself. I take the words. I scatter them, in time and space." She waved her hand and the letters spelling out BAD WOLF wooshed away. "A message, to lead myself here." He tried to warn her. She flicked her gaze to his. "I want you safe! My Doctor, protected from the false God." The Dalek emperor started yelling. "You are tiny!" she exclaimed. "I can see the full of time and spac. Every single atom of your existence, and I devide them." She riasd her hand again and the Daleks began to melt. "Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies." He looked around in horror. In wonder. "The time war ends." The Dalek ship exloded in flames. He tried to stop her. "How can I let go of this?" she asked him. "I bring life!" And those words brought dread, because he felt a presence that should no longer be there.

"This is wrong!" he yelled" "You can't control life and death!" Her eyes flicked back to his. "But I can! The sun and the moon. The day and night. But why do the hurt?" Tears ran down her face now. He blamed himself. She was going to die. _Your fault! _his head screamed. _Your fault!_ "I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be." He was stunned. Amazed. Shocked out of worry and into joy for a split second. "That's what I see. All the time! Doesn't it drive you mad?""My head!" she had screamed. "Come here," he told her. He held out his hands. All it would take was one touch and he would aborb the time vortex. But she stepped in between his arms, close to him. "It's kiling me!" she cried. And he could just touch her. Hug her. Hold her. Let her burn. But she was so beautiful. A goddess. The one person that understood. And he quipped the first joke that came to mind, formed out of desperation. "You need a Doctor."

And he kissed her. He kissed her like he would never see her again. And he knew he wouldn't. His last act would be a selfless act for the selfless girl that had saved him in his darkest hour. Saved the world. The Bad Wolf. The Defender of the Earth. His pink and yellow Rose. He kissed her, drawing in the time vortex. This regeneration had been born of war. The next one would be born out of love. And when he regenerated, he had her voice. He had (although he didn't know it at the time) hair and a smile and jokes she would love. A personality lighter, for the love she had given him. He had died for her. And then he had regenerated. For her.


End file.
